lofty style of
head-dressing gives a majestic turn to the neck. I do not know whether
you are aware that I have always been a coquette as regards my neck; it
is my only bit of vanity. Have you brought your little color-pots?"

"Yes, aunt, I have the whole apparatus, and if you will sit down--"

"I am frightfully pale-just a little, Ernest; you know what I told you,"
and she turned her head, presenting her right eye to me. I can still see
that eye.

I do not know what strange perfume, foreign to aunts in general, rose
from her garments.

"You understand, my dear boy, that it is only an occasion like the
present, and the necessities of a historical costume, that make me
consent to paint like this."

"My dear little aunt, if you move, my hand will shake." And, indeed, in
touching her long lashes, my hand trembled.

"Ah! yes, in the corner, a little--you are right, it gives a softness, a
vagueness, a--it is very funny, that little pot of blue. How ugly it must
be! How things lead on one to another! Once one's hair is powdered, one
must have a little pearl powder on one's face in order not to look as
yellow as an orange; and one's cheeks once whitened, one can't--you are
tickling me with your brush--one can't remain like a miller, so a touch
of rouge is inevitable. And then--see how wicked it is--if, after all
that, one does not enlarge the eyes a bit, they look as if they had been
bored with a gimlet, don't they? It is like this that one goes on little
by little, till one comes to the gallows."

My aunt began to laugh freely, as she studied her face.

"Ah! that is very effective what you have just done--well under the eye,
that's it. What animation it gives to the look! How clever those
creatures are, how well they know everything that becomes one! It is
shameful, for with them it is a trick, nothing more. Oh! you may put on a
little more of that blue of yours, I see what it does now. It has a very
good effect. How you are arching the eyebrows. Don't you think it is a
little too black? You know I should not like to look as if--you are
right, though. Where did you learn all that? You might earn a deal of
money, do you know, if you set up a practice."

"Well, aunt, are you satisfied?"

My aunt held her hand-glass at a distance, brought it near, held it away
again, smiled, and, leaning back in her chair, said: "It must be
acknowledged that it is charming, this. What do your friends call it?"

"Make-up, aunt."